by Stella Hart
“I told her.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, brows furrowing. “Why would you tell her?”
He smiled thinly. “I was friends with her and your father, from way back. Bet you didn’t know that, did you?” he said, raising a brow.
“No.”
“Well, it’s true. I approached your parents for help when I started my investigation, because I trusted them implicitly, and I had a feeling they’d help me make some of the connections I needed for my story.”
“So they both helped you?”
Peter nodded. “Yes, it was both of them at first, but then your father got into that horrible accident.” He paused and let out a sigh. “I blame myself for that. He was so stressed when it happened, and it was all because of me. If I hadn’t dragged him into my investigation, he’d probably still be alive.”
My mind whirled with a multitude of questions. There was so much I still didn’t understand. So much I didn’t know.
I crossed the room and grabbed a chair. “I can’t fucking believe this,” I muttered, sinking into the seat.
“Sorry for the rude awakening, but you have to believe it,” Peter said, rattling his chains again. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
No shit.
I stared into space, lapsing into silence as the questions continued to flood my mind. “The group that covered for the real murderer and framed you… were they called the Golden Circle?” I finally said, glancing back up at Peter.
Shock registered in his expression. “How the hell did you hear that name?”
“Alexis told me about it.”
A ghost of a smile curved up his thin lips. “Sounds like she’s a real chip off the old block, then.”
I nodded. “She’s studying journalism at Blackthorne. Just like you did when you were her age.”
“I see. What about….” He trailed off and tilted his head, and I realized he was enquiring about the rest of his family. He probably had no idea what to call them, seeing as he’d only just discovered that they changed their names.
“Sarah is Sascha now,” I said. “And your wife changed her name to Sophia.”
“She always liked that name,” he said. “Do you know them very well?”
“I only know Alexis, but I do know a few things about Sascha and Sophia. Sascha is an artist now, and she lives in Avalon City.”
“What about my wife? Did she remarry after I disappeared?”
I pressed my lips into a thin line. “Yes. She moved to California and married an accountant.”
Peter sighed and lifted one shoulder in a resigned shrug. “Can’t say I blame her. She believed I was innocent when they arrested me, but I’m guessing that changed after a while.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“No need to apologize for being the bearer of bad news. And like I said, I can’t blame her.” He hesitated and rubbed his jaw. “What about…?”
He trailed off again, and I raised a brow. “Sascha?”
“Yes. Sascha,” he replied. “God, it feels so strange to say these new names. Anyway, does she believe that I killed all those people too?”
“I think so. But Alexis doesn’t,” I said hurriedly, feeling as if I had to bring at least a glimmer of hope to this man’s tragic existence. “She always thought you were innocent. She’s actually been working on some sort of scheme to prove it and clear your name.”
“My little Lexie,” he said softly. The tiny smile was back. “How did she find out about all of it?”
“From the letter you wrote to her, I think.”
His eyes snapped up to mine. “Letter?” he said, cocking his head.
“She told me you wrote letters and sent them to your lawyer to pass on to the girls when they got older. Don’t you remember doing that?”
“Of course I do,” he replied, brows furrowing. “I’m just surprised they received them, that’s all. I wasn’t sure they would.”
“Well, they did.”’
His shoulders drooped, and he slumped back against the wall. “That’s a relief,” he murmured.
I furrowed my brows as I watched him. “Why didn’t my mom ever tell you anything about your family?” I asked. “Like the name changes, for instance.”
“She said it would be better if I tried to forget about them as much as possible, seeing as I was never going to see them again, unless we managed to identify the real killer and clear my name, which we’ve never been able to do,” he replied. “So she’s never kept me updated on their lives. I don’t even know what my girls look like anymore.”
I nodded slowly. It seemed needlessly cruel to keep that sort of information from him, but then again, I didn’t know the whole story.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Peter said, correctly reading my expression. “My life isn’t a total nightmare down here. I have everything I want to stop me from going mad. TV, DVDs, books, music. Your mom comes down to keep me company, too, when she has spare time. Sometimes she even cuts my hair and helps me shave. Gotta say, though, I actually like the beard now.” He rubbed the hair hanging from his jaw and smiled again.
“What about food? It can’t be healthy eating packaged or canned stuff all the time,” I said, gesturing to the trash pile in the far corner.
“It’s not all processed junk. When your mom isn’t traveling, she brings me proper meals, and when she’s away, she leaves me enough food and water to fend for myself. I’ve got a microwave and a kettle, so I can cook a few things and make tea and coffee.” He nodded toward the kitchenette before looking back at me. “Seriously, Nate, she’s done her best to take care of me, and I completely understand the reasoning behind her keeping me away from my family and the rest of the outside world. I accepted it a very long time ago.”
I raised a brow. “Really?”
“Yes.” He nodded firmly. “The Golden Circle are still out there somewhere, because we’ve never been able to nail them, so if I ever tried to get out of here and contact my wife or kids in any way, they’d find out, and then I’d be screwed. My family would be in danger too. So it’s better that they forget about me and believe I’m dead, for their own sake.”
“I guess I can see the logic in that, but it’s still pretty fucked up,” I muttered, wondering how the hell my mother could’ve gotten away with hiding something like this from me for so long.
I’d never once suspected she was up to anything strange or shady. I’d never even seen her walking over to this part of the estate before.
“Nothing I can do about it. Like I said, if those people ever find out I’m still alive…” Peter trailed off and used one finger to make a slicing motion over his throat.
“Right. So what happens now?” I asked, lifting my hands. “Are you expecting me to forget about this and leave you down here?”
“Actually, I was wondering if you could do me a favor.” Peter’s voice had turned gruff now, and as he waited for me to reply, he dabbed at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.
“What do you want?”
“You said you know Alexis, right? And that she’s been investigating what happened to me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think you could bring her to see me?” he asked softly, eyes shimmering. “I know the others can’t find out the truth, because it’s far too risky, but if Lexie is looking into this stuff, then I think she’ll understand how important it is to keep it secret.”
I frowned and rubbed my jaw as I considered his request. He had no idea what his daughter had become in his absence. No idea what awful things she’d done in his name.
It wasn’t his fault, though. He didn’t make her into a monster like I originally thought. She turned into a monster all on her own, out of a twisted sense of loyalty to him.
“Please, Nate,” Peter said, voice cracking pitifully. “Please let me see my little girl.”
Guilt twisted my guts into knots as I watched him clasp his hands together in a begging gesture. He would be devastated if he found out the dark truth about h
is precious ‘little girl’. It might even be enough to make him want to end his sad little life down in this bunker.
Then again, he didn’t need to know the truth. I could make a deal with Alexis—my silence about the girls she murdered in return for some time with the father she thought she lost a decade ago.
I took a deep breath and steeled my jaw. “Fine. I’ll bring her to you.”
27
Alexis
Nearly three hours had passed since Nate’s departure. Just as I was starting to think he wasn’t coming back, the hatch opened, and his footsteps echoed in the passage.
I jumped up and dashed over to the entryway, pulse racing. “Did you find anything?” I asked.
His lips pressed together in a slight grimace, and he waved over at the bunk. “You need to sit down.”
“Why?” I asked, brows furrowing. “What happened?”
“Just sit down, Alexis,” he said curtly.
When he’d spoken to me in this tone on past occasions, his face had been thunderous, but right now he didn’t seem angry. He seemed conflicted.
I went back to the bunk and sat on the edge, twisting my hands in my lap. Nate remained on his feet. He paced the length of the shelter a couple of times, running his hands through his hair, and then he finally came and stood in front of me.
“I don’t even know how to tell you what I found,” he muttered, head slightly shaking. “It’s fucking crazy.”
“Just say it,” I replied, mind whirling. What could he possibly have discovered that would set him on edge like this?
He rubbed his jaw and let out a short sigh. “You’ve always thought your father was innocent of the Blackthorne Butcher crimes.”
“Yes.”
Nate crouched in front of me so that our eyes were level. “You were right,” he said. “He didn’t do it.”
“I know.” I tilted my head to one side and slightly narrowed my eyes, wondering what sort of game he was trying to play with me.
“The Golden Circle is real,” he went on. “They framed him for those murders and covered for the real killer, and they planned to have him killed in prison so that he’d never be able to tell anyone the truth.”
“I know,” I said in an exasperated tone. “I’ve been telling you this stuff for weeks. Why do you suddenly believe me now? Or are you just pretending to believe me to mess with me?”
“I’m not pretending.” Nate put his hand on my knee and squeezed hard. His eyes were steely in their intensity. “Alexis… he survived.”
I frowned. “What?”
“The Golden Circle didn’t get to him. Someone else saved him.”
My stomach clenched, and I blinked rapidly, wondering if this was all part of a vivid dream. “That’s not funny,” I muttered.
“I’m not joking. He’s alive.”
“Stop,” I said in an acid tone. “If you think I’m going to let you do this to me, you really need to think again.”
“What?”
“I’m not stupid, Nate. I know you’re trying to fuck with my head,” I said through gritted teeth as I got to my feet. He rose to his full height too, and I pushed on his chest as hard as I could. “This is another one of your schemes to torture me, and it’s not going to work. You’ll have to stick to slicing me up or electrocuting me if you want a reaction from me.”
I expected him to be mad at me for shoving him, but his expression didn’t change, and he didn’t push back. “I know what it sounds like, but I swear I’m not fucking with you. Your father is still alive. I just saw him.”
“Oh yeah? Where?” I asked, throwing my hands up. I didn’t believe a word he said.
“In the other bunker. That’s what I found,” he said. “That’s where the music was coming from. It’s him.”
A sudden coldness struck at my core, and I took a step back. “Please stop, Nate. This is really fucked up,” I murmured, looking down at the floor.
He put a hand under my chin and pushed it upward, forcing me to meet his unwavering gaze. “You need to listen to me. I’m not lying. I found another bunker, and I went inside. Your father is chained down there.”
“Chained?”
“Yes. My mother has been keeping him down there for the last ten years. She’s the one who broke him out of prison.”
“Why the hell would she do that?” I asked, twisting my lips into a sneer. “Does a proclivity for imprisoning people in old bomb shelters run in your family?”
“No.” Nate lifted his palms. “Apparently my parents were friends with your dad, and they knew what was going on back then. They helped him fake his own death, and my mother has been keeping it up for the last ten years. He’s only chained down there to stop him from being tempted to leave, because it’s too dangerous. They need everyone to believe he’s dead, or else the Golden Circle will kill him.”
His story sent a swift, vicious jolt through my system, like an electrical shock. It was almost too outlandish to be fictional. After all, who the hell could dream up something so ludicrous?
A memory suddenly flashed in my mind, and I slowly sat down again, feeling as if my legs might collapse at any moment. “I just remembered something,” I said, voice barely above a whisper.
“What?”
I looked up at him. “Remember when I broke into your father’s study?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“I saw something while I was in there. An old diary that belonged to your father. It mentioned my father.”
Nate frowned. “What did it say?”
“Not much. It just had his home address and his Blackthorne office address.”
“So that proves it, then,” he said, brows rising. “They knew each other.”
“I guess so, but…” I trailed off and slowly shook my head as my chest began to ache. “Is this really happening?”
“Yes.”
“My father is really alive?”
“Yes. He’s been here all along, in a bunker right over there.” Nate pointed toward the far end of the room, near the storage cupboards. “Whenever you heard music down here, it was him.”
The look in his eyes was so raw, so jarringly honest, that I couldn’t bring myself to doubt him anymore. As ridiculous and crazy as his story was, I knew it was true.
My father was alive.
The ache in my chest swelled until I felt as if I were choking. Tears leaked down my cheeks as bile stung the back of my throat, and my body shook so much that it looked fake, like a high schooler in a small-town play simulating shock and fear.
Sinking down onto the mattress, I shut my eyes and tried to suck in air to get my breathing under control. In, out. In, out. But try as I might, I couldn’t stop the racking sobs and hyperventilation. All the years of grief and anguish were flooding through me, scraping me raw, and it felt as if it would never end.
Nate sat by me as I let it all out, keeping one hand on my back. It wasn’t an affectionate gesture—just a way to stop me from rolling off the bed and cracking my head open on the floor—but it was comforting all the same.
“I know it’s a massive shock,” he finally said. “But you need to get it together.”
I took a deep breath. “I just… I can’t believe this is happening right now,” I whispered. “I thought he was dead.”
“Well, they never actually found a body, did they?”
“But… the blood…” I shook my head as more tears spilled over my cheeks.
“They faked it all. They took blood from him to set it up,” Nate explained. “They even pulled some of his teeth out to make it look like his body was up in that national park at some point. That way everyone would believe some sort of vigilante broke him out of prison and murdered him.”
I flinched at the thought of my father’s blood splashing all over the ground. “That’s fucking crazy.”
“I know. But it’s true, and it worked. Everyone thought he was dead. Even his own family.”
Swallowing hard, I finally used all my strength to fo
rce myself back up. “Now that you know about this, what are you going to do?” I asked in a small voice. “I mean, you’re going to let him out, right?”
Nate lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I haven’t decided yet. He and my mother really seem to believe that it’s too dangerous for him to go out anywhere. But on the other hand, keeping him trapped in a tiny old bunker for the rest of his life seems totally insane. I’m surprised he hasn’t lost his mind already.”
“If only I could imagine what that was like,” I muttered sarcastically, gesturing to the bunker around me. I turned back with my brows lifted. “You are going to let me go now, right?”
Nate squared his jaw and looked me dead in the eyes. “No.”
Incensed, I leapt up again. The sudden, brutal shock of his refusal seemed to have knocked the rest of my emotions right out of me. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Nate stood up as well. “No. I can’t let you go,” he said, crossing his arms over his broad chest.
“Why?” My eyes felt like they were about to bulge right out of my skull. “You know I’m innocent now!”
“No, I know your father is innocent. Not you.”
“But half your argument against me is that I supposedly inherited my so-called psychopathy from my dad!” I said. “Now you know he’s innocent. So how the fuck am I still guilty?”
Nate narrowed his eyes. “I used to think it was in your nature to kill. That you inherited some sort of crazy killer genes from your father. Obviously, I was wrong about that,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean you aren’t a killer. The environment a person grows up in shapes who they are just as much as their genes. You know, nature versus nurture.”
“So?”
“So you’ve had a pretty horrible life, Alexis. Raised in a world where everyone thought your father was a psychotic murderer. Your whole life was uprooted because of it, and the shame followed you wherever you went, even after you changed your name, because you still knew who you were deep down. That sort of trauma could drive anyone crazy.”
“I’m not crazy. I’ve never hurt anyone.”
“Have you forgotten about Nessa Pratchett and Claire Reilly?” he asked, raising a brow.
